I sent a letter to Gloria’s fan club asking them to please speed things up. Also, I asked if there was any way they had a catalog where we could pick out pictures and how big we’d like them to be.

Tom apologized for saying that all I wanted from him was a kid and he admitted that he knows I’m strong and is sorry he sprung up at me to try to get my attention to calm me down. He’s sorry cuz I saw my mother and other people who sprang at me with violent intentions and I’m sorry for jumping the gun myself.

It’s done and over with in our books and we hope to just move on. I promised to work on not screaming so loud when I get angry and he said he’d just leave or something, rather than try to calm me down till I’m ready to calm down on my own.

We played cards last night but didn’t have sex. I have to wait until the weekend, as usual. I told myself, “Don’t do it. That’s stupid of you to wait and see if he cums after 14 days of not discussing a kid, cuz you know he won’t. Just get on birth control now.”

However, if I get on it now, he’ll use that as an excuse for why he didn’t cum. Like you need your woman not to be on birth control to cum, right? So, I’ll just wait and see what other excuses he uses, then call for it.

A couple of days ago Tom was telling me that during childbirth, your hips become lubricated by a certain hormone and that only during childbirth do your hips spread in a way that they normally can’t. That must be why someone my size can have a baby naturally. I didn’t know that. He knows a lot about this subject, that’s for sure.

A bird landed in the window again yesterday and this time he managed to hang on for a few minutes. I have a new all-brown bird, that’s different from the chicken pigeon who has white on the very back of him. I also have a new smaller Measles pigeon and yesterday I noticed a band around one leg. It looks like there are one or two small round rubber or plastic blue bands and one white plastic one that’s about ¼ inch wide. I saw the upside-down number 17 on it. Tom said it could’ve been someone who was raising it or that the government banded it for a study on where they travel to or something like that.

Later…

I spoke with Andy earlier and tomorrow or the next day I might be going over to work on his cat some more after he gets up.

I’m gonna put a note out tomorrow for the mailman telling him I understand how confusing it must be to keep track of Drive vs. Ave. However, I ask that they please ensure proper mail delivery, cuz we’ve both gotten each other’s mail. It’s not that I mind getting Irene W’s mail, it’s that I’m afraid our mail is being misdelivered and I’m so sick of this shit. The call to the post office didn’t work, so hopefully this will.

I did an interesting thing with my nails. I polished every other one red and the others purple. On the purple ones I made a red slash and on the red ones I made blue slashes. My parents would love it!

Now I’ll backtrack a little more. Like I said, life at the beach wasn’t too thrilling. Most of the time, since I had to be on the beach, I’d go off into my own little world and go climb on some of the rocks that divided the beaches, etc. I guess there’s not much more to say about the beach, so now I’ll go on to discuss when I left home for the first time. That was in late July of 1981.

Before I go back to 1981, let me just say that next door, just like next door to them, seems to be like most people. You ask them something nicely and they don’t give a fuck and they’re gonna do what they want to do, anyway.

Why do I have to get blacks next to me who blast that obnoxious rap music? Well, it was only for a minute and it wasn’t loud enough to wake me up, but it wasn’t soft, either. I was out back before the 7:00 movie smoking a cigarette when I heard Joely and some guy yelling at each other. I think they were yelling at each other, anyway, and all I could make out were the words, “Not my baby!” from Joely.

So, then I came back in a few minutes before 7:00 and as one of them was leaving, the music started and I said to myself that if they didn’t pull out and leave by the time the movie started I was gonna go out there and give them a piece of my mind, but they left. If I knew I’d only hear their music and nothing else for a minute here and there at that same volume, I could relax, but I don’t know that they’re gonna say - what the fuck and blast it enough to where the bass and drums wake me up if I’m asleep. I think it’s gonna take me the rest of 1996 to relax about them if nothing gets worse than it has been and I certainly can’t trust Robin. Not with her lying about my getting pregnant soon.

I think they just left, and yes, they left quietly, but I’m wondering if they aren’t gonna be company freaks. I noticed an aqua-colored car there this morning and that was it. So, if they’re both there and they both have their own cars, who knows? That’s 4 different color cars I’ve seen over there. Aqua, black, blue and red.

I haven’t heard the kid and they still have no dog which is great, but I’m still so nervous about them, not knowing for sure what they’re gonna do. Are they gonna have a big party and have an outdoor barbecue with all kinds of music and other noise?

Okay, in July of 1981, I was sent to the Brattleboro Retreat in Brattleboro, Vermont where I stayed till December of that year. It was hell there, but not as bad as places I’d be in after this. This place was for drug and alcohol users and there was an adult psychiatric ward as well as one for adolescents where I was since I was 15 at the time.

My mother made it sound like a country club, but she said the doctors were the ones that made it sound like a country club. Whatever. All I know is that, like Valleyhead, they didn’t make you feel any better about yourself or your situation and their attitude was that the kids were fucked up and the parents were perfect.

The floor I was on was in the shape of a huge L. We each had our own room and there were about 30 kids there, both girls and boys. There was a rec room, a porch, 2-3 staff meeting rooms, the nurse’s station, a lounge area, bathrooms, and shower rooms. All the windows had bars, and the glass was Plexiglas. Only the windows in rooms down at the end of a long hallway had real glass.

Even though this place was a nightmare, there was more freedom and less strict rules there. You could have all the money you wanted and if you got on restriction, that didn’t mean you couldn’t go in your room or only have 4 cigarettes a day like at Valleyhead. Sometimes if you were on restriction, you were made to go to your room or you couldn’t use the phone or watch TV.

I had a tough caseworker there and she made me have only 6 cigarettes a day cuz of my asthma. She said it was cuz of my asthma, but my asthma wasn’t bad then and it was really out of spite and power play. She didn’t like me very much. Guess it was cuz she thought I was wimpy. The staff could be like students in the way that they favored the tougher ones. Margaret M and Barbara D at Valleyhead were like that.

At one point I was also only allowed in my room twice a day for a half-hour each, once they saw that I liked to be alone more often than most others.

When they caught me smoking in the rec room, they restricted me from going in there. Then they caught me smoking on the porch and restricted me from going there. Then they caught me smoking in my room, so they took my door down. Then they caught me smoking in the closet in my room and they took that door down. Finally, they caught me smoking in the bathroom and shower room and they couldn’t restrict me from going in there, so I had to go in there with a staff member.

When I finally got out of there, I went home to the house in Longmeadow. By this time Tammy and Larry were long gone and my father’s mother, Bella, was living with us. She came to live with us before we moved from the first house in Longmeadow. She had been living in California and she had a stroke.

The following April, 4 months later, I became a ward of the state.

From that December to April I attended an alternative high school in Springfield which I liked. It only had about 5 teachers and about 10 students. We could get away with murder there. We could skip class, go outside, and do drugs, and even our bus driver smoked pot with us.

Jenny got me into cigarettes and pot at age 13 and I smoked pot about 30 times here and there till the final time when I was 21 and had a bad experience with it like I did when I was 16. The pot had either been laced or just didn’t go with whatever meds I was on at those times.

In April I was taken to Emergency Services in Springfield and stood there at the crisis center for about 3 days. This was the very same crisis center I was in for a couple of days when I was 21 and got taken to court for prank-calling in 1989.

From there I went to LaRagione’s in Springfield. This place was originally owned by Kate LaRagione who was Anna’s mother. I was there till about June and Anna and Harry wanted to be my foster parents till I was 18, but the state wouldn’t allow that and neither would my parents since they wanted me in a long-term residential school.

I loved it with Anna and Harry so much and felt so loved, wanted and understood. I don’t remember what in the world made me cut myself before I left there, but I know it had to do with the threats they were making about taking me away from them and placing me in a school.

I remember being in my social worker’s office when the men in white coats came in and took me to Northampton. The state funny farm, and man, was I lucky to get out of there alive! What a nightmare this place was and talk about no privacy and being surrounded by lunatics! An old lady would hit me over the head with her pocketbook. Another one would masturbate in the bed across from me in my cubicle.

They gave you cigarettes every hour if you didn’t have your own, but you weren’t allowed to have any matches or lighters. Also, this wasn’t the type of place where you could bring a stereo or anything else of personal items. You were made to wear hospital gowns and you were watched every second like a hawk. The bathroom stalls had no doors on them, there were no mirrors anywhere and you couldn’t even take a shower in privacy. The shower stalls weren’t private much like in a prison.

I was there for 8 days, but when I first got there I filled out a 3-4 day notice to leave. Even my parents were furious that I’d been taken there. When my notice to leave was denied, all I was doing was sitting on my bed crying. I didn’t hurt anything, anyone or myself, yet they took and tied me down to a small bed in a small room by my wrists and ankles for 2-3 days. I naturally tried to fight them off as hopeless as it was. When I needed to pee or shit, they’d bring a bedpan and I was fed by someone from a tray. Once they untied one arm and I punched that person, so they tied me back up and fed me themselves and it was amazing that the person feeding me didn’t choke me to death with the way they were shoveling the food into my mouth.

Later…

Wow! I was just in the pool. I went in the Jacuzzi first and little by little, I got used to that and ducked under once. Then, I swam up and down the main pool once. It was pretty cold at first and that 72º water felt like 30º. It’s windy out there, too, so I was quite chilled upon coming out of the water.

I was in Valleyhead from August 1982 to August 1984 when I graduated. It was a big mansion in Lenox, MA. Aside from Northampton, this was the worst place I was in as a minor. There were 2 or 4 or 6 girls in a room, but usually 4. The rules and restrictions there were heavy-duty and there was very little free time, except on weekends.

When I was 17 and there for 8 months, I jumped out a window and broke my arm. I felt trapped and just totally panicked. I felt like I’d never get out of there.

I don’t really want to spend too much time on Valleyhead as I know I’ve already covered enough about it here and there.

I went home in August of 1984 to my parent’s house. By this time Nana Bella was dead. She died when I was 17 and my mom’s parents died 6 months apart from each other when I was 19. So, it was me, my parents, Tammy and her first kid Lisa who was only about 1 at this time. I lived there for about 16 months and it was always me against Mom, Dad and Tammy and them against me for the most part. Still, I had freedom and privacy. Tammy took over my old room, Lisa was in Nana’s old room and the last of the 4 bedrooms was a den. I lived in the cellar.

Later…

Holy shit! Nervous is dead! I can’t believe he’s actually dead. When I was hanging out by the pool, I heard a cough that sort of reminded me of his nervous cough, so I called information to see if he finally had a phone. There was no listing for a Kevin T, so I called his mother to see if I could get any information from her and she said Nervous died of a sudden heart attack last September. She said they didn’t know what caused it and by the time he got to the hospital, he was gone.

This actually made me cry for a little while there. He was a nervous, obnoxious weirdo, but it’s still too bad that he had to go this way when he just turned 54. And he used to say that he had 20-30 years left when we met when I was 21 and he was 45 and that he’d live to be in the 80s just like his dad.

It goes to prove Tom’s point when he said that usually, it’s those that have no history of heart problems that die suddenly from heart problems. He told me this after I told him how I worry that mom will suddenly call saying that dad died. Nervous never had any heart problems that I knew of, so it’s got to be nerve-related. He was always so nervous.